Teachers Write 6/7 – Thursday Quick-Write

Quick Write (the assignment appears below):

Breslin walks into the library for the 13 day in a row. He wonders if he is the only one that thinks that it is ironic that lunch detention takes place in the room that teachers are always complaining students don’t want to go to to check out books. The drill is simple: take a seat at an empty table, eat your lunch, be quiet. Being quiet is easy for Breslin. Being quiet is not what gets him trouble. In fact, his 20 day lunch detention sentence if a result of him being, quiet.

Breslin walks by Mr. Anderson reading the newspaper. Mr. Anderson is the only person Breslin has ever seen reading the newspaper, and he has never seen Mr. Anderson not reading the newspaper. As Breslin heads for the back of the library he tries to avoid making eye contact with Hector who, like Breslin, is serving 20 days in lunch detention. However, unlike Breslin, Hector was not quiet. Not quiet at all.

(This is kind of fun. I have one day of school left, so I’m going to bow out for the evening.)

Assignment:

First of all today, a HUGE thank you to the authors who popped in to answer questions for our Wednesday Q&A day. There is some mighty useful information in the comments here, so you may want to bookmark it for later, too. And teacher/librarian friends, please do me a favor? Take a few minutes to look up all those authors who made time to answer your questions yesterday – their responses will mean more if you learn about their books. And if those books sound like something your readers would enjoy, please consider adding them to yourIndieBound wish-lists or GoodReads to-read lists.

A student walks into the library/media center at lunchtime. What is she/he thinking? Worried about? Dreading? Hoping or wishing for? What are the risks/stakes for him/her? Show us in a paragraph or two.

Note from Kate:Some possible formats for this quick-write:

A journal entry from that character, written later on

A letter from that character to his or her best friend

A letter from that character to his or her worst enemy

A poem in the character’s voice

A monologue in the character’s voice

A conversation in dialogue between the character and a friend/the librarian/an enemy

For those of you in the middle of a work-in-progress, try this with your main character, or better yet, a secondary character you want to develop more fully. Imagine him or her walking into a room and feeling uncomfortable and awkward. Why? You can write this from a third person perspective, from the focus character’s point of view, or for a twist, try writing from the point of view of a disinterested observer in the room — someone who has no idea who the person is or what’s going on. What would he or she observe in terms of mannerisms and body language?

Feel free to share a paragraph from your Thursday Quick-Write in the comments later on if you’d like!